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Indian Pickle, or Piccalillo

A pickled mixture of cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, kidney beans, radish pods, beetroot, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Indian Pickle, or Piccalillo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the white cabbage, cauliflowers, cucumbers, onions, kidney beans, radish pods, and beet-root.

  2. Place the chopped vegetables in a sieve and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Let them dry in a warm place for three days.

Pickle

  1. Layer the dried vegetables in a large earthen pan, adding a handful of mustard seed between each layer.

  2. In a pot, combine enough vinegar to cover the vegetables with 1 ounce of turmeric. Boil and pour it hot over the pickles.

  3. Let the mixture sit in a warm place for two weeks or until the pickles turn bright yellow and most vinegar is absorbed.

Add the spiced vinegar and seal

  1. In a separate pot, boil 2 quarts of vinegar with 1 ounce each of mace and white pepper, and ¼ ounce each of cloves and nutmeg for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour this mixture over the pickles along with 3 ounces of peeled garlic and a few chalots. Seal the container tightly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and carries the pickling spices.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables so they dry and firm up before pickling.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour and aroma as the vegetables sit between layers.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their bright yellow colour.
Cauliflowers
Main vegetable that soaks up the vinegar and spices during pickling.

The step that matters

Boiling the vinegar before pouring it over the pickles. Boiling the vinegar with the spices extracts their flavour into the liquid, and pouring it hot helps it penetrate the salted, dried vegetables evenly. Vinegar must fully cover the vegetables, or the parts left exposed may spoil.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, radish, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, radish, mustard, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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